1. Technical Field
The invention relates generally to wheel measurement, and more particularly, to an electronic gauge for obtaining reliable measurements of an object, such as transportation objects (e.g., railway wheel, rail, axle, vehicle wheel, etc.).
2. Background Art
During use, a wheel's profile wears due to friction and the like. Additionally, a wheel may become damaged due to poor conditions and/or one or more foreign objects. The wear and/or damage can render the wheel unsafe for operation. Similar problems can occur with rails, axles, and other transportation objects being used over time. As a result, it is important to periodically inspect each transportation object that is in use and/or slated for use.
For example, the profile of a railway wheel and/or rail are periodically inspected. To this extent, important attributes of the wheel profile include a rim thickness, a flange thickness, and a flange height. During normal wear due to contact between the railway wheel and rail, the rim thickness and flange thickness will decrease and the flange height will increase. An accurate determination of each of these attributes is important to ensure that sufficient metal remains on the railway wheel for safe operation. Such a measurement is typically performed in a train yard or a train shop. Similarly, when truing (e.g., re-cutting) a railway wheel to restore a desired wheel profile in a train shop, these attributes, as well as the wheel diameter, are determined to ensure that the railway wheel is safe for operation. Additionally, a wheel manufacturer may measure one or more attributes of the railway wheel profile to perform quality control or the like on a newly manufactured railway wheel.
Historically, the measurement of one or more attributes of a railway wheel and/or rail profile has been taken using a mechanical caliper. To this extent, an operator obtains the measurement directly from the mechanical caliper while it is placed on the railway wheel/rail and manually records the measurement for later reference. However, this solution has several drawbacks. For example, when the railway wheel is installed, other mechanical parts, such as a braking system, a shock absorber, axle support, etc., limit the space in which to obtain the measurement. Additionally, other factors, such as poor lighting, manual recording errors, keypunch errors, etc., can introduce errors in the measurement process. Measurement errors can lead to an unacceptable/unsafe railway wheel remaining in operation, the premature condemnation of a railway wheel when it could have been trued, the inclusion of a railway wheel for truing when it should have been condemned, and the like. As a result, each year, accidents occur due to the use of excessively worn railway wheels and money is lost due to the inaccurate truing/condemnation classification of railway wheels. Further, the mechanical caliper does not yield measurements that can be automatically provided to a computerized wheel management system frequently used to manage the wheel maintenance process.
To address this situation, several proposals have been made for performing electronic railway wheel/rail measurement. However, each of these proposals includes one or more limitations. For example, some proposals only measure a subset of the required attributes, such as a rim profile. Additionally, some proposals are not portable, require additional computing capability and/or cannot provide data to a remote system.
To this extent, a need exists for a portable electronic measurement solution that helps ensure the accurate measurement of all attributes of an object, such as a railway wheel, rail, axle, or the like, that may be desired for a particular application and/or communicate the measured attributes to a remote system for further processing without requiring data entry by an operator.